A recent e-newsletter from Kane/Miller, the wonderful, small, independent publisher of books that (in their own words) “will make children say both ‘wow, that’s just like me’ and also ‘wow, that’s different’” has called my attention to a fascinating online photo gallery of images from the book Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio (Ten Speed Press, 2005). The book, “a unique photographic study of global nutrition” shows portraits of 30 families, in 24 countries, surrounded by a week’s worth of groceries:
On the banks of Mali’s Niger River, Soumana Natomo and his family gather for a communal dinner of millet porridge with tamarind juice… In the USA, the Ronayne-Caven family enjoys corndogs-on-a-stick with a tossed green salad.
Utterly insightful and educational, its potential for curriculum tie-ins is great: the rich photos and essays will help students compare, contrast, and make generalizations about our “hungry planet” when learning about world cultures, international economic and political conditions, the process of globalization, and more…
Thanks for this link! A striking observation is how much packaged (i.e., processed) food there is on some of the tables. All that plastic, paper, and glass has to go somewhere! Eating closer to the earth would be better for it– and us!
Thank you for bringing this book to our attention. We were at our local museum a couple of weeks ago, where there was a reenactment of the Home Front during the Second World War and one of the things that really struck me was a plate containing a week’s rations. It really brought home both how much more we take for granted now in the same place, different time; and also how there are so many people in the world who survive on a lot less…
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